The Dead Bird

When my children were younger, I read to them, a lot. Since I was doing the reading as well as most of the book purchasing, I tried to find books that I liked. It's nice of course if the children liked them, too, but if I had to sit there and read it out loud, it might as well be something that appealed to me. So when I found a children's author that I liked, I bought all of their books that I could find. I might have said it was for my children, but that wasn't completely true; it was mostly for me.

One author that I liked a lot was Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote many wonderful books for children before her death in 1952 at age 42. I hadn't realized - until I read the Wikipedia article to find out when she died - that in addition to writing children's books she led a pretty interesting life. She is probably best known for Goodnight Moon, but she wrote many others, and at her death left behind a large number of manuscripts, at least some of which were published posthumously. One of her books - originally published in 1938 - tells the story of a group of children who find a dead bird.

The children were very sorry the bird was dead and could never fly again. But they were glad they had found it, because now they could dig a grave in the woods and bury it. They could have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died.

So they take the bird into the woods and bury it, and sing a song to it, and they cry. They mark the bird's grave with a stone.

And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave.




Recently, walking down the hallway to my office, I have often thought of this story. My office building has outer walls that are mostly windows. At the bottom of the windows on my floor is a narrow metal ledge, only 5 inches or so wide. One day a month or two ago I noticed on the ledge outside my office door the body of a small yellow-green bird, lying on its side; it was clearly dead. It was sad, seeing the body of this little female goldfinch right outside our window. I tried not to look, as I went in and out of my office.

Someone propped a book up against the window, so we wouldn't see it, every time we walked by.

Sometime after that, the dead bird was gone. I don't know what happened to it, but it was gone.

And now the book is now back on the shelf.